One of Mr. Roche’s most important and iconic buildings is the Ford Foundation (1967), near the United Nations. Approximately 40 years later, he designs the S.E.C. buildings and he returns to and re-interpets his earlier treatment of the building skin as a three dimensional screen pulling the passerby into — at least visually- the building and the movements of its inhabitants.

The pristine white apartments of the Bauhaus are here enlivened with cubes and curves, bands of angled brick, in yellow rather than white flat siding, and the overhang supported by pole are less regular. And the least Bauhaus feature is the stone facing under the overhang and on the low walls. It is my assumption that the stone facing is original.